Unfortunately our Journey began um…….bloody early, 0430. Happily we did not sleep through the daylight savings change, because we had pulled an all nighter watching the Buena Vista Social Club, getting our work finished, the house squared away and ready for our house sitters. Spent the flight from MEL to SYD in a semi comatose state…….until I was offered Eggs Benedict for breakfast…..couldn’t turn them down.Met up with Tam and Stacey for a goodbye coffee at Kingsford Smith. It was so great seeing them both. They even gave us a present, which was something we were going to buy and had spent the whole flight up to SYD cursing the fact that we did not have one, a cigar cutter. Occasionally I have been forced to bite the end off a cigar or two, but was not looking forward to doing it for six weeks. We said goodbye at around 0930 and went down to the JAL lounge for about 30 mins before boarding the flight.
As a testament to the brave folk who are on the front lines of the “war on terror” I have successfully managed to get said Cigar Cutter through two airport security screens. These are the last screens I will go through before Cuba so we have made it through.
Having never flown JAL, but knowing we were in ye olde business class i.e. no lie flat beds I was shall we say felling a little apprehensive. However the seat was very comfortable and the service second to none and the food absolutely fabulous, plus they had AVOD (Audio Video on Demand).
My spirits were further lifted when we were ushered left after boarding. For a nanosecond I thought we had been upgraded to FIRST, alas no first class was to be had but we still got to sit in the pointy end which was fantastic as there was about 3 – 4 crew for around 12 people.
Tans kicked off proceedings with her drink de jour a Bloody Mary and I had a Piper Heidsieck. We then sat down to possibly the best in flight meal of my flying career.
There was a choice of Western and Japanese. We both opted for the Japanese, which ended up being a seafood extravaganza that began with the stewardesses bringing us each a large tray. Like all Japanese meals the tray is covered in a “delightful” assortment of cute little bowls, jars, receptacles and little parcels, each one containing some culinary surprise. The menu reads as follows…
Zensai
Grilled Prawn with Egg Yolk Sushi
Salmon & Barramundi Cake
Beef Skewer
Sweet Potato Persimmon
Kobachi
Cold Japanese Noodles “Soba”
Mukouzuke
Baked Eggplant & Mushrooms with Lime Slice
Dainomomo
Steamed Fillet of Orange Roughy, Prawn & Squid with Oriental Sauce
All of it was superbly cooked and amazingly fresh, tasted especially nice with a few chilled glasses of Coldstream Hills 2004 Chardy.
After lunch finished watching the Al Gore global warming movie and then watched Clear and Present Danger. Dozed a bit as well.
Touched down at 6pm in the evening Tokyo time. Got crammed into the sardine train from the plane to immigration. We had done our research looking on Yahoo Weather and such and expected Tokyo to be chilly this time of year. How wrong we were, Narita Airport has it’s very own sub tropical micro climate. The heating is up way to high and I was sweating like a farm animal by the time we got to immigration. Tried using our APEC cards, which eventually worked. The APEC card is a pretty hit and miss affair, when I was last in New Zealand the APEC line was closed so I had to wait in the queue, when I was in China I was told I should be in the APEC line, even though China is not yet listed on my APEC card and in Japan the APEC line was closed and after some gesturing, pointing and slowly spoken loud English we were through. Got straight on the bus to the hotel and we were in our hotel room within about 1 hour of having landed.
Happily JAL also sprung for our hotel room, dinner and breakfast. Had a great tempura for dinner, also consisted of the same “delightful” packages / receptacles / bowls / where the rest of our dinner was hiding in. After all this eating and sitting, you can imagine, “What goes up must come down”, or more graphically “what goes in, must come out”, so after about 2 seconds of being in our hotel room we (me) opted to take the Bidet for a test drive. Cleaned, dried perfumed and with undercarriage intact it was a successful, even pleasurable experience. On a side note, what we didn’t realise our luggage would be through checked………all the way to MEX. We had packed toiletries, but no change of clothes or durps. For those of you thinking “ew” at this point, we DID get them washed by the hotel but it did mean we were captive to our hotel room for 4 hours the next day, with an expired TV card, which means more Pixelated Porn, I think we watched “The Girls of McDonalds”, stimulating viewing.
Before I sign off, as I have 40 minutes before boarding and want to use the massage chair I have to talk about TV. All I did was innocently hit one of the preset buttons on our remote and we were bombarded with PORN. Well pixelated porn at least, but pixelated genitals aside not much was left to the imagination. With the only other thing on TV being a town hall meeting on illegal immigration into the US on CNN, and Japanese infomercials we promptly went out and bought a TV card….watched about 30 seconds of Third Watch before going to sleep.
If I learnt one thing flying JAL, its that the human races’ enslavement by what will ultimately become our robot overlords is just around the corner. At the JAL lounge Science Fiction, becomes science fact. Machines that pick up your beer glass, tilt it at the perfect angle for head minimisation, to subsequently squirt a sliver of head from a dedicated nozzle. A brilliant result for what was no doubt thousands of hours and millions of dollars spent on research.
Oh and last thing, I want….need a musical toilet with variable pressure water jets, drying wind, warmed seat and touchless flush……no home would be complete without one.
